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On "progressive" demands for "patience" with Obama

I like this parable:

[P]eople are standing by the side of a river and they keep seeing babies being rushed down the river in the current and they desperately reach out trying to save as many babies as possible. Day after day they're reaching out. They get new tools, they build a bridge, they get a ladder, they're constantly trying to get to those babies. They're hoping that they can save as many, until finally somebody walks up and says, “Who's throwing them in? Go upriver, find out what the real problem is and stop that!”

"Progressives" are the ones reaching out with the tools, the ladder, and bridge -- and pleading for patience* -- while the babies drown. Conservatives are not only watching the babies drown, they're gleefully cheering it on. (And meanwhile, the banksters, gave both progressives and conservatives a lift to the bank of the river, are making bets on which babies drown first.) But who's going upstream to find the real problem?

Answer that, and you've found "the third pole in American politics." Now, I'm not sure I have the answer. But you'll never get the right answer unless you ask the right question.

Hey, and guess who the parable comes from?

NOTE *The career "progressives" also either invoice for the tools, the ladder, and the bridge, or take a commission. I'm sure that has nothing to do with their commitment to tools, ladders, and bridges.

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tarheel-leftist85's picture
Submitted by tarheel-leftist85 on

lead-filled "floats" and command them to grab a hold for their own good--like health deform/insurance industry bailouts.

CMike's picture
Submitted by CMike on

Richard Grossman says:

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[20:05] The problem is not when corporations break the law because we have laws to deal with that, I'm much more concerned with what corporations do; what the people running corporations do that is considered legal; considered legal by the law and considered legal by the lore...the culture. When corporations deny Constitutional rights for their employees -- that is legal by the law and the lore. When corporations pour their billions of dollars to bastardize the electoral process and the legislative process, when corporations lobby -- that's legal.

When corporations write the telecommunications act of 1996 -- that's legal. Most the harms; the rights denials and assaults of corporations are legal. When the DuPont corporation spews x thousands of pounds or thousands of tons of known deadly chemicals into the air and the water everyday and their vice-president gets up there and says, "we have a permit for this" from the state of Delaware, or the state of Michigan, or the state of Washington -- it's legal.

You go and look and look in your state corporate code: corporations shall have the rights of persons. So, when they, in fact, sit on your zoning boards and sit in on your planning boards, and when they sue to nullify [a] law because it denies their equal protection [under the] law, or due process [under the] law, or First Amendment free speech rights -- it's legal.
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Richard Grossman continues:

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When the Pennsylvania legislature passes a law banning advertising of tobacco products within a hundred feet of a school.... And the American Tobacco Company and the Lorelei Company go to federal court and sue, saying this violates our corporations' First Amendment rights under the United States Constitution rights and the Supreme Court rules nine to zero in their favor and those billboards go up next to the school -- it's legal.

...If we made a list here of the laws the [federal courts and the] Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional because of a suits brought by a human person claiming that that law violated some human right found in the Constitution and we compare that list with -- to the local, state, and federal laws passed from the beginning of this country that were declared unconstitutional by [federal courts and] the Supreme Court out of suits brought by corporations saying those laws denied them their Constitutional rights that list would a thousand to one [longer than the list of the courts finding in favor of suits brought on behalf of human rights.]

...Most of the violations to human rights and the harms that corporations are causing in this country today are considered by the law as legal and are considered by the lore, the culture, as essential for the American way of life, as essential for jobs, as essential for liberty, as essential for security, as essential for progress. How many times have you heard, oh if you pass this health law or this environmental law it'll throw people out of work, it will destroy the economy? And how many elected officials around the country do we have that don't believe that?

We're trying all the time to persuade and convince elected officials who believe that [corporations are] the essence of the source of the jobs and progress and wealth and goodness and security [that we have] in this country. And that the [root] of that is the production of endless more...and anything that interferes with the production of endless more -- with fewer and fewer people making the endless more, of course -- is a menace, is a traitor to the American way of life.

Submitted by jawbone on

a non-Hillary -- and backed a more tractable politician, a more conciliatory person, a compromiser who was already right leaning.

Someone who thought most of the good ideas had come from the Republicans in the past couple decades or so.... All praise to St. Ronnie!

Marketing can sell anyone to the American people if the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) go along with it. And why wouldn't the corporate media go along with their corporate owners/masters?